Adobe today released its 2016 online shopping data for Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day. More than $5 billion ($5.27 billion) was spent online by the end of Black Friday, a 17.7 percent increase year-over-year (YoY). Black Friday set a new record by surpassing the three-billion-dollar mark for the first time at $3.34 billion (21.6 percent growth YoY) while Thanksgiving accounted for the remaining $1.93 billion. Black Friday became the first day in retail history to drive over one billion dollars in mobile revenue at $1.2 billion, a 33 percent growth YoY.

The five best selling toys were Lego Creator Sets, electric scooters from Razor, Nerf Guns, DJI Phantom Drones and Barbie Dreamhouse. The five top selling electronic products on Black Friday were Apple iPads, Samsung 4k TVs, Apple MacBook Air, LG TVs and Microsoft Xbox. Mobile is driving the majority of visits to retail websites on Black Friday at 55 percent (45 percent coming from smartphones, 10 percent from tablets), while accounting for 36 percent of sales (25 percent smartphones, 11 percent tablets). Large retailers* have seen twice the growth in online sales compared to small retailers since the beginning of the season. Retailers that have invested in mobile, email and social have seen 30 percent more sales on average and 25 percent higher average order values.

Adobe’s Black Friday report is based on aggregated and anonymous data from 22.6 billion visits to retail websites. Adobe measures 80 percent of all online transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers, more than any other technology company**, and uses its proven predictive model powered by Adobe Sensei to forecast online sales and trends. Seven dollars and fifty cents out of every 10 dollars spent online with the top 500 U.S. retailers goes through Adobe Marketing Cloud. The tremendous volume of data puts Adobe in the unique position to deliver highly accurate, census-based online sales totals, pricing and product availability trends.

“Shoppers hit the buy button at unprecedented levels as conversion rates were up nearly a full percent across all devices in the evening hours on Black Friday,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst and director, Adobe Digital Insights. “With the full day total coming in at $3.34 billion, Black Friday may have just dethroned Cyber Monday’s position as the largest online shopping day of the year. Shoppers are still buying at higher than expected levels in the early morning hours of Small Business Saturday.”

Additional findings for Black Friday:

• Mobile performance: Conversions improved over holiday averages, with smartphones at 2.4 percent, tablets at 4.6 percent and desktops at 5.5 percent (compared to holiday averages of 1.3, 2.9 and 3.2 percent, respectively). The average order value (AOV) on iOS smartphones ($142) was higher compared to Android smartphones ($130).

• Most popular products of the season: For the entire season so far (Nov. 1 – 24), PlayStation 4 is the best-selling video game console, followed by Microsoft Xbox One. Pokémon Sun and Moon leads in video games, followed by Call of Duty. Samsung 4K TVs lead in televisions, followed by Vizio 4K TVs.

• Top promotion drivers: Retailers saw an increase in sales coming through Shopper Helper Sites like RetailMeNot and CNET (16.5 percent share of sales), email (17.8 percent), display (1.2 percent) and social (0.9 percent). Traffic coming from search ads (38.3 percent) decreased by 4.3 percent from holiday averages while direct traffic (25.3 percent) decreased by 9.6 percent, although both remained the largest contributors to overall sales.

• Thanksgiving Day: Consumers spent $1.93 billion, 11.5 percent more than in 2015, with an average order value that was relatively flat at $160, compared to $162 in 2015. Mobile accounted for 57 percent of visits and 40 percent of sales ($771 million). Smartphones drove twice as many sales as tablets, at 27 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

Well technology moves quickly and we are all expecting the pro line to finally deliver pro apps. Who wants to buy a new device more in tune with more capable apps, than one which may or may not be compatible?
The pro line desperately needs pro apps, and I would want to be as future proof as I can when buying a device today.

Apple’s abandoned Air (I have a 2013) still has the best battery life (12 hours) out of any of their laptops new or old. It’s a shame that they settled on 10 hours as the new standard. The cult of “thinner” has brought diminishing returns for several years. Until a real technological breakthrough is made, I think most people would choose 20% more battery life over 20% thinner on any mobile Apple product.